DOGS TO THE RESCUE
Animals trained to search for skiers and hikers buried deep in snow
It starts with a quiet rumble and instantly gets ugly. An avalanche in the backcountry or at a ski resort can be deadly. If you are wearing a beacon you have a good chance of being recovered. After that, you have to hope there is an Avi dog nearby.
“I could hear her moving around over me, and then she left. The sound is very muffled under the snow, so I didn’t know what was happening. When she came back and started to dig, I knew she found me for real,” said Bonnie Wearmouth, a caving enthusiast who played victim for the morning.
While Wearmouth dusted off the snow, Gibson the avalanche rescue dog was praised like, well, like she had just rescued a buried person.
Our day started by meeting fouryear-old German shepherd Gibson and her handler, Kyle Hale, and eight-year-old shepherd Brooke and her handler, Adam Sherriff, at the gondola at Kicking Horse Mountain Resort near Golden B.C. While Brooke focused on chewing her ball, Gibson watched intently out the window.
Both Hale and Sherriff are members of the Kicking Horse Patrol Safety Team, and volunteer members of the Canadian Avalanche Rescue Dog Association (CARDA). Currently, all 25 validated teams reside in Alberta and B.C.
As we rode to the top of the gondola, we learned that while it looks like fun with all the games and praise, safety patrolling is a hard job that they all take seriously.
It starts before you even get the dog. You need a breed that works well in harsh environments and has a strong hunt, retrieve and praise drive. Sporting breeds like labs, golden retrievers, shepherds, border collies and duck tollers work best. Puppies that pass a Volhard-style puppy aptitude test at only 49 days old are good candidates to move forward with the training.
It takes about two years of training and testing before the CARDA badge is awarded, with yearly training to keep that validation current. Classes include basic obedience, scent differentiation, search techniques and handling social situations. The dogs also have to learn to run between the handler’s legs as they snowplow down the run or, better yet, learn to ride on his/ her shoulders. They need to calmly ride a chairlift, a snowmobile and either in, or, dangling under a helicopter. Meanwhile, the handler has to be a member of a search and rescue team, be certified in avalanche awareness and first aid — annually.
“We start the training with runaways,” says Sherriff as he kicks the ball back to Brooke. “I’d run away and hide while someone held my dog. She’d pursue me by following my scent. Then I’d hide in a snow cave, then hide in one of many caves. The difficulty increases when we introduce other people as the run-aways. Its all about getting them to learn to use their nose. Whenever they find us it’s a big game as the reward.”
Hale, who is lead patroller at the resort as well as the emergency program manager for the town of Golden and surrounding area, adds, “The reality is we don’t have a lot of avalanches where people are caught in them in Canada. But we do have a lot of avalanches that need to be checked. When an avalanche is called in and there are tracks leading into the debris, we use transceivers first. Then we bring the dogs in to sweep. I can send Gibson in for 20 minutes in a high-risk area instead of risking the lives of 20 people with probes for four hours.”
When we got to the top of the mountain, the dogs leaped from the gondola. Brooke quickly assumed her position behind Sherriff; barking and bawling with excitement as they bolted to our perfect powdery test patch in Crystal Bowl.
The dogs were tethered to a tree while the handlers hid the humanscented sweaters. Brooke, still barking, watched Sherriff ’s every move but had no idea where Hale was hiding his sweater at least 100 metres down the slope.
On command, Brooke bolted towards where the first sweater was buried. Her nose dragged through the snow circling around, back and forth where the scent was heaviest. Like a wolf after a mouse, her feet and head went into the snow. Powder flew and so did the sweater. Heaps of praise and a short game of tug of war let her know she was a good dog. But then Sherriff got serious again and commanded her to “Search!”
Game on! Her nose went down. We honestly couldn’t remember exactly where the sweater was, so it really was up to her to find it. A few minutes of nosing around and bang! She was back playing tug of war and getting praised by Sherriff.
While we watched Brooke, Hale dug a cave big enough for our “quarry.” Wearmouth settled into it with the other sweater and Hale loaded blocks of snow over her to completely conceal her. A few minutes later, Gibson was released with a command to search.
The dog bounded through the snow picking up scents, mentally tossing those left by the handlers and other skiers and was focused on finding the quarry. Avalanche dogs don’t have the luxury of smelling a victim prior to a rescue so they are looking for any scent under the snow. Both Brooke and Gibson can locate scents buried under more than 70 centimetres for up to 24 hours.
Wearmouth was only buried for a few minutes. We watched as Gibson hunted through the snow. On the first pass when she missed finding her prey, Hale quietly watched and never gave her a hint. When Gibson did the two-paw pounce and crashed into the cave to yank out the coveted sweater, she didn’t care that someone came out with it. It’s all about winning the game.
Only one avalanche victim in Canada has been found alive by avalanche dogs and that was at Fernie Alpine Resort in 2000. But countless stranded skiers and lost hikers have been found by the four-legged rescuers.
Statistically speaking, if you are buried in an avalanche your chance of survival drops with every minute. Wearing a beacon is your best chance of being found fast. If someone saw you go under, you’ve got a 91 per cent chance of survival (depending on injuries) in the first 18 minutes. By 30 minutes, your chances drop to 30 per cent. If a CARDA dog is nearby, he/she truly is your best friend.
CARDA (www.CARDA.ca) is a volunteer, non-profit organization that will happily accept donations. Check out on the website to donate or to learn how your dog can become an avi dog.